


Home Is Yesterday

by raendown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dimensional Travel, Gen, unintended but still nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15226131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raendown/pseuds/raendown
Summary: Kakashi inherits some land he doesn't want, explores a jutsu he didn't know he was capable of, and learns a bit about letting go of the past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Naruto Gift Exchange over on tumblr. 
> 
> Title is a quote taken from the second documentary on the life of Clive Wearing, the man with a seven second memory.

The thing about being the only person left in the village possessing a Sharingan was that, even if he wasn’t Uchiha by blood, there wasn’t really anyone else left to shoulder the legalities of the Uchiha Estate. Up until Sasuke left Kakashi had no idea that his one time student was all that kept the land from being bulldozed for public use.

Now it was only him, a lonely broken failure of a teacher, and Kakashi had been shocked in to silence when the elders first cornered him to shove a waiver in his face and spout legal jargon in the hopes of confusing him in to signing it. Worse than leaving these problems in the hands of a child was leaving them in the hands of a man who could barely figure out what to do with his own tiny apartment, let alone an entire neglected village district. He couldn’t just let them flatten the place. Even just hearing the suggestion once had set Sakura off in to a teary-eyed speech about _when_ Sasuke came back and the _home_ he would want to come back to.

Privately, Kakashi had his doubts about both of those things but he very carefully did not mention them to Sakura. No need to upset her further.

In part what encouraged him to stay strong was the knowledge that Naruto would give him thrice the long-faced lecture as Sakura had upon returning from his training with Jiraiya. One little signature and he would never hear the end of it for the rest of his days. Kakashi didn’t have a really great life but he wasn’t prepared to ruin what good days he did manage to have by giving Naruto something to cry about.

And so it fell to him to do something with the place. It took a week or so for him to build up the courage to go anywhere near the entrance to the district and when he did, all he accomplished was to read through a full novel and a half in the three days he sat up in the tree just outside the gates. When he finally forced his feet across the line they marched him straight to Obito’s apartment, to the very spot where he had stood and thrown rocks at the boy’s window to wake him up so many times. He spent more than an hour standing on the street, wondering if he was standing in his own footsteps and wishing he could go back in time just to stand here once again, to see Obito’s head pop out the window with sleep tousled hair and make fun of him for it one more time.

He didn’t realize he had opened his mouth until his own voice nearly startled him out of his skin.

“Obito? We’re late, dobe.” Silence answered him and Kakashi closed his eyes, calling out again in a soft voice. “Come on, they’re waiting for us. Minato-sensei…Rin…we’re late.”

Against his sense of reason, which warned him that there would be no answer no matter how long he waited, Kakashi pressed one hand against the wall of the empty house. The brick was cold under his palm and dotted with the creeping moss which had been slowly taking over this portion of the land for several years. With his eyes still closed he could almost picture that huffy face his old friend used to send him through the window, unhappy at being awoken so early.

“Please come down, Obito,” he whispered.

Fourteen years ago the Uchiha district had gone from a lively hub of family and warmth to the loneliest place in the village all in the space of one night. Kakashi felt the weight of that now, wondering suddenly if there had been blood on this wall he was touching.

Just the thought of it drove him away and gave him the push he needed to step back out of the memories. He forced himself to look back one more time, searing the image of the empty windows in his mind, then turned and continued on down the street to resume his contemplation of exactly what should be done with the area. Apparently the elders had managed to corner Sasuke in to signing something when he was still quite young which gave them the right to erase the district as long as no one was left in residence nor ‘using the land’. Contract law turned the vague wording of that clause in his favor and left it up to him to determine how ‘using the land’ was defined.

Which would be wonderful if he had any ideas. He certainly wouldn’t want to live here in this empty place. Even he wasn’t that anti-social and he questioned once again whether Sasuke would even wish to live here if he ever returned. He probably shouldn’t have been left here as a child.

Feeling as though he were violating a lot of people’s privacy, even if they were a little too dead to care, Kakashi spent the rest of his day poking his nose in to the different buildings and trying to determine if there was anything useful to be salvaged. Restoring the properties would rather nicely fit the definition of using the land and could also double as a method of training. The major problem with the idea was that it bored him to tears just thinking about all that pointless effort. Who would live in these building after he restored them?

No one, that’s who.

Still, he did find a plethora of interesting things in his search. He’d had no idea that the Uchiha had their own little market district several streets passed Obito’s old house. One building with no windows left appeared to be a bakery, from which he dug out an old book of recipes which Kurenai would surely enjoy. A couple blocks down he found a little curio shop with shelves full of cute little dolls – well, they would have been cute if there weren’t rows upon rows of them all staring at him with their dull button eyes.

It wasn’t until he made it close to the heart of the district that he came across the most amazing find of all. He didn’t think much of it at first; it looked like nothing but a half-collapsed old shrine. There wasn’t much to lose by paying his respects, however, and hoping that any spirits residing within might be comforted by his prayers. Kakashi went in with nothing more on his mind than the same problem he had wrestled with all day.

The moment he spotted the trap door half open in the floor, the large tile which had covered the entrance shifted to one side, was the moment which changed his life. How was a man like him meant to resist such a blatant invitation as that?

What he found below confused him at first. Just a massive mural and an ancient looking stone tablet with writing engraved upon it. Then he began to read.

Legends and secrets he was never meant to know unfolded before his very eyes. The creation of chakra itself, the God Tree, and the Infinite Tsukuyomi which would be the salvation of all mankind. Kakashi devoured it all with a reverent sense of awe – but also with a grain of salt. Surely a lot of these tales had to be exaggerated or embellished with the purpose of passing on certain lessons. He couldn’t determine what half of the lessons were supposed to be but, then, he didn’t have a traditional Uchiha raising to fill in the gaps of his knowledge.

What he found really interesting about the tablet, what drew his attention the most and kept him riveted in the underground shrine long passed when evening had fallen, was a secret which pertained to only two people left in the world. He read about the secrets of the Mangekyou Sharingan. He learned how to unlock it and, most importantly, a little on how to wield it.

It was well past midnight when Kakashi slipped in through the window of his dingy apartment, his head swimming with new knowledge. Tsunade had been bothering him to take some time off from missions and tomorrow he just might give the old biddy a heart attack by taking her up on that offer. A new training regimen awaited him and it would be foolish to expect things to go smoothly on the first few tries. Learning how to do anything with the Sharingan was hard without a teacher.

But it was bound to be worth it.

-

Kakashi couldn’t believe how right he had been.

Not only had he already unwittingly unlocked the Mangekyou many years ago and just never used it, but his particular form came with the single coolest jutsu he had ever heard of in his life. It beat out that narwhal ice jutsu by at least a dozen of Gai’s cool points.

The Kamui was amazing and every hour he trained with it had more and more possibilities swirling around in his head the way reality itself swirled when he focused his eye. As his training progressed and he grew more proficient with it, Kakashi eventually learned that he could do more than warp reality to remove something from the world, that all of the things he had successfully managed to send in to the void were all in truth going somewhere. Apparently he had his own pocket dimension.

He discovered this on a day when he wasn’t paying as much attention as he probably should have been considering how often he crawled home with chakra exhaustion after training. The first pull in the center of his chest went ignored, mentally pushed aside as a flutter of nervous excitement. Kakashi set his feet and closed his eyes, gathering chakra for another attempt at snapping a tree branch in half with his newest jutsu.

If there had been any Uchiha left alive and willing to train him, he might have had a little more warning than a slightly stronger pull in his chest before he found himself sucked in to the vortex rather than the branch he was trying to concentrate on. He consoled himself that no one was around to hear his high pitched shriek of surprise as he pitched headlong in to the unknown.

Several different things presented themselves to his attention at once after he had his feet on firm ground again. First, that all of the objects he had made disappear were scattered around his feet like a motley collection of unwanted debris, crunching under his heels and making it a little harder to keep his balance. Secondly, that he was most certainly not in the forests of Konoha anymore; as far as the eye could see there was only darkness, broken up by massive white stone pillars like the one he was currently standing on. And thirdly, he realized with no small thrill of glee, that Obito’s eye continued to be a better gift than he had ever realized. He had _his own pocket dimension_.

Of course, the first thing he did with his pocket dimension was let his eyes roll back in his head and pass out from the amount of effort it had taken to inadvertently drag his body here. Several hours passed him by before he crawled back to consciousness, confused at first as to where he was, before he remembered what had happened.

Then he beamed around at the nothingness surrounding him, feeling as though he’d been handed the keys to heaven. No one would ever find him if he hid inside here to take his naps. Gai wouldn’t be able to track him down for challenges if he chose to spend a bit of time here with his books. It was perfect! His own corner of solitude!

Now the only thing he needed to do was figure out how the hell to get out – and maybe how to replicate what had happened to bring him here in the first place. It wouldn’t truly make a great hiding place if he couldn’t figure out how to come and go as he pleased. But first a small break was in order. His short involuntary nap had taken the edge off of the exhaustion which had been creeping up on him but he would need a little more energy if he wanted to make attempts to return home.

Luckily he had taken to carrying a few storage scrolls full of food ever since the first night he had spent passed out in the forest, trying to fill his belly with whatever he could forage off the trees.

Halfway through his meal Kakashi snapped his head up to look around him wildly.

Someone was watching him.

Despite the fact that he could see nothing around him, no people and nowhere for someone to hide, Kakashi was a trained shinobi and he knew what it felt like to have someone’s eyes trained on him. It didn’t matter whether they had good intentions or bad, what mattered was that he was obviously not as alone in here as he thought. But how? Perhaps another trip down beneath the Naka Shrine was in store to read the stone tablet again. Hopefully there would be hints as to where he could find more information on this ability he knew nothing about.

Stuffing the rest of the food in to his mouth and wrenching his mask back in to place, Kakashi decided that if someone really was in this place with him then it was worth the risk making an attempt to get back home even though he had no idea what he was doing and no time to come up with any theories.

The sensation of someone watching him only grew stronger as he lifted his headband to reveal a swirling Sharingan, eternally active and always battle ready. With a surge of chakra the tomoe spun together to form the Mangekyo Sharingan, twisting in endless circles until the very fabric of reality began to twist as well in a spot several meters in front of him. When the center began to resemble a black hole and something tugged sharply deep inside his chest, Kakashi reached for that sensation and gave himself over to it, working on nothing more solid than a spur of the moment hunch.

When he was pulled in through his own jutsu this time he managed not to squeal or make any other embarrassing noises despite the terrifying sensation of melting that he hadn’t noticed the first time. He was able to keep calm until he had solid ground underneath him once more and looked around.

Barely ten feet to his left there stood a man with unruly dark hair wearing a typical Konoha uniform, glaring at him with a severely disapproving expression.

“Honestly, Bakashi, what a waste of chakra. I told you where I would be when I left this morning; you could have just walked over here instead of using that stupid eye I gave you.” Huffing in irritation, the man reached up to fiddle with the patch over his left eye without seeming to realize that he was doing so, more out of habit than conscious thought. He looked like a grown up version of–

“Obito!?”

“Well duh, who were you expecting? The sage of six paths?”

For the second time that day, Kakashi fainted.


	2. Chapter 2

“But he looks just like you!”

“Maa, maybe I made a clone and forgot about it?”

“Yeah, you _would_ make a clone prone to fainting.”

“Uh…okay? Is that supposed to be an insult? I don’t see how you meant that as an insult.”

“Screw you, Bakashi.”

“I mean, if you insist.”

“UGH!”

The voices continued to chatter and bicker with no regard for the fact that Kakashi was desperately trying to cling to the last vestiges of sleep. He’d been having the weirdest dream about hopping in to his own dimension and hopping out only to find a very much alive and adult Obito staring back at him like he’d arrived late for training or something. Considering the fact that he had watched Obito die when he was twelve, he would have preferred to sink back in to dreams than face reality.

Apparently such wishes were bound to go unanswered, however, as a new set of muffled footsteps approached, following quickly by the sound of two quick smacks.

“Do you two ever stop?”

“No. He fights me in his sleep.”

“Well then maybe you shouldn’t live together.”

“But Rin!”

Kakashi shot up on his bed of grass, his one uncovered eye snapping open. “Rin,” he breathed, heart racing as he placed the newcomer’s voice.

“Yes?” He looked up when the voice answered, freezing in place at what he saw.

Her hair was longer but still the same old brown, pulled back in a high ponytail but leaving a few strands to frame the purple clan marks on her cheeks. Kakashi stared and wondered if maybe he hadn’t slipped back in to his dreams after all. Rin had died when he was thirteen and yet the woman before him had to be the same age as him – older, actually, as Rin and Obito had both had a couple of years on him.

“Are you feeling alright?” she asked. He stared at her stupidly, unable to answer.

“He’s a _clone_ ,” the strangely adult Obito whined. “Why are you going all doctor mode for a clone?”

“I still don’t recall producing any clones today.” Kakashi looked over to see that the owner of the third voice was in fact a mirror reflection of him.

There were a few differences. He would never be caught dead wearing such a tacky looking eye patch when his headband worked just as well and the other man’s vest appeared to have been patched with some colorful thread at one point instead of the meticulous repairs he himself was capable of.

“Well obviously you did so just disperse him or whatever.” Obito rubbed at his stomach in the way Kakashi distantly remembered that he always did when it was close to meal time.

“I tried to while he was passed out but it didn’t work because he’s _not my clone_. I don’t know how else to say it so it sticks in your little pea brain.”

“Oi! I do not have a pea brain! If you won’t disperse him then I’m gonna start stabbing!”

“Maa, I’d like to point out that I’m not a clone.” Kakashi finally found his voice, drawing the attention of everyone in to room to himself. “But that hardly matters when none of you are real so…ah who cares. Stab me. I’ve been stabbed in my dreams so many times I probably won’t even notice.”

With one of her eyebrows raised, the Rin lookalike asked him, “What do you mean when you say that we aren’t real?”

“You’re all dead, remember? You died when you were fifteen, you when you were fourteen, and you’re me so basically we’ve been dead inside since around the same time. All dead!” He tilted his face up to offer them all a false but cheerful smile. No point in pulling the punches inside his own head.

The three of them stared back at him as though he’d just told them up was down and east was west but Kakashi ignored them. Instead he rolled on to his heels and stood up, brushing grass off the seat of his pants. He supposed it made sense to continue the dream from where he had left off before but could he not have at least imagined himself a nice comfy bed instead of lying in the middle of a field?

He watched the strange grown up version of his old team all look at each other, having an entire conversation with their eyes. If he hadn’t thought he was asleep before then he definitely would have known now. As much as he wished for such a thing now, he’d never been that in sync with his team, never achieved that level of communication, and he was forced to admit that it was mostly his own fault for thinking he knew better than them and didn’t need them for anything. He knew better now but it was just a little too late for that at this point.

After a minute or so of silent gestures and meaningful expressions, the three of them turned to him with identical looks of determination.

“Rin says I can’t stab you anywhere really significant so just hold still for a minute and I promise I won’t do too much damage. If you bleed then we’ll take you to sensei.”

“Sensei? But sensei is–”

“If you tell me he’s dead too, I will scream at you.”

“Look, it’s only _mostly_ my fault that you’re all dead, alright!?”

“Dobe,” the mirror of himself whined. “Just stab him. If he really is a clone then I want those memories. Sounds like he’s had an interesting time since whenever I created him.”

Obito stabbed him. Kakashi gave his leg a very blank look, watching the blood seep down his calf in a detached manner as his mind took off in three different directions.

That stab wound felt awfully real.

-

Sensei did not look just the way Kakashi remembered him and that, more than the seeing his friends all grown up, freaked him the hell out. Minato no longer wore his hair in long spikes. It was shaved close to his head in the back with only a short fringe above his eyes to speak towards his old style. There were laugh lines around his mouth and frown lines between his brows, the marks of a man who put just as much energy in to his duties as he did in to keeping a happy home life.

“Hello you three. What’s with the clone?” Even his voice was slightly different, lighter without the weight of a war hanging over his head.

“Ah! Right to the heart of the matter, as always!” Obito rubbed the back of his head nervously. “He, er, isn’t a clone. He’s just…another Kakashi? We were hoping you could help us figure out what’s going on because I stabbed him and he didn’t disappear and Bakashi says he didn’t make any clones and this guy seems to think we should all be dead or something?”

“Breathe, Obito.  Explain to me everything that happened.” Minato gave his old student a friendly smile. Then he squinted at Kakashi like a man whose eyes were growing dim but refused to give in to the inevitability of glasses.

Kakashi thought hysterically that Minato would probably suit glasses rather well. He held stiff under the searching gaze of a man he had once clung to as his last bastion of sanity, the man whose loss had sent Kakashi on a downward spiral which had taken him more than ten years to crawl out of. Then when his three companions had finished stumbling through their triple narrative he bore the weight of one last endless look before the image of his old sensei tapped his fingers against his chin and sat up straight.

“One of you boys really should have guessed this yourself, considering the jutsu you share between your eyes, but it sounds to me like someone’s hopped across the barrier between dimensions. Fascinating.” Minato’s eyes lit up with excitement. “I always wanted to go back to my research on interdimensional travel! You boys remember when you helped me study with your kamui?”

“Yes sensei,” Obito and the other Kakashi intoned, sounding as though they were exhausted just remembering it.

“I have so many questions! Clearly things are different between our world and his. This is such an amazing opportunity! We could learn so much from each other!”

All three of his students groaned with fond exasperation at how quickly he switched to childish enthusiasm but Kakashi was still stuck on the possibility that this was all real, that he might actually have fallen through the barrier and ended up in a parallel world. He felt so many things at once that he couldn’t identify any of them and was left standing there like a doll, staring openly with his jaw hanging wide behind the mask.

They were alive. Not in his own world but in this one they were all alive; living and breathing right here in front of his eyes where he could touch and talk and hold. Kakashi nearly buckled under the weight of his sudden desire to throw his arms around the missing pieces of his heart.

Eventually Minato noticed his state and he seemed to understand. He gave Kakashi a kind look and came forward to rest both hands on his shoulders.

“You say that in your world we are no longer alive.” Kakashi nodded and Minato briefly tightened his grip. “How old were you when you lost us?”

“Twelve when Obito was crushed in a cave-in. Thirteen when Rin was…murdered. Fourteen when you gave your life to save the village and sealed the Kyuubi in to your son.” No matter how many years had passed it still stung to let the memories play back behind his eyes.

Some people, however, just don’t know how to read a room.

“Crushed in a cave-in? Are you kidding? What a lame way to die!”

“Obito!” Rin elbowed the man in question between the ribs and shook a stern finger at him for being so crass.

Watching them and the way the copy of himself laughed so freely, easily dodging Obito’s half-hearted swing, Kakashi wondered if the world could handle two of him. He wanted nothing more than to stay here in this place forever and never let these people go again.

For now he settled for letting himself collapse in to his old sensei’s arms when Minato opened them, taking the comfort he had needed half a lifetime ago.

-

Sharing his stories wasn’t easy but Kakashi had always known that he would have to face these people someday. He’d always thought that it would be in the afterlife and he had fully expected that he would need to bear the weight of their betrayal, their anger. Instead all he found was forgiveness.

Rin held his hands while he told her that he had put one of them through her chest and he had cried when she kissed his palm in benediction. She told him that he had done nothing wrong, that she laid no blame at his feet, but that if he needed it then her forgiveness was freely offered. Her words had soothed the nightmares which plagued him even now all these many years later, allowing Kakashi the first true good night’s sleep he had achieved since childhood.

Obito was still a little upset that he hadn’t gone out in a blaze of glory but he was appeased that his life had been given to save another’s.

“That’s one more you owe me you stingy bastard!” he had said to the Kakashi of this world. Then he’d spent several minutes shouting about ungrateful teammates when all his Kakashi had done was hum and pretend to yawn, feigning boredom.

Even Minato had made a point of absolving Kakashi of the guilt he had carried with him for so long and it reached a point when he hardly knew what to do with so much positivity all being directed at him. It felt unnatural, though not unwelcome. Although he floundered in it like a fish out of water, Kakashi still soaked it all up as much as he could while it was still on offer. Life had taken many things away from him and he had learned his lessons well about making the best of the time you are given.

Several days after his arrival found him lounging on the floor of the apartment his other self shared with Obito, watching the two of them bicker in the kitchen over what to have for dinner that night. It seemed this universe’s version of him was much fonder of sweet things than he himself was and advocated loudly for anything fried. They might look the same and talk the same but there were some pretty glaring differences that went beyond the fact that one of them knew how to patch a vest and the other didn’t.

Not growing up alone had left this version much less independent, more prone to relying on others and dipping his toes in to the pool of knowledge between the three teammates. It had also exposed him to new foods and activates and over time acclimated him to things which Kakashi himself had never picked up the taste for. The sweets were an excellent example. He remembered Obito carrying sweet candies everywhere he went as a child and if he had ever been able to take the stick out of his own ass long enough to try some then he probably would have learned to like them as this version had.

And it wasn’t just himself that was different than what he thought was ‘normal’; all of his special people were changed in some way. While Kakashi was grateful to have this chance to get to see them all again and spend some time with lost loved ones, the more days that passed the more he realized something he would never have guessed.

He wanted to go home.

In his own world Rin had never been a gossip and Obito hadn’t developed a penchant for playing with his blades as he spoke. Such innocuous and harmless qualities and yet they rubbed him in just the wrong way until Kakashi was forced to admit that these were not the people he had loved and lost. They were shadows and dreams dangled at the edge of his fingertips, real enough to evoke long buried emotions but not enough to hold on to. Kakashi loved his team and by proxy he loved these people. But this was not where he belonged.

Admitting that to himself opened the door to admitting that he still had commitments in the Konoha he did belong to. Staying here would be as good as walking away from everything he had sworn to protect, abandoning the home he vowed to watch over in place of the people he had lost.

On the other hand, he had absolutely no idea how he had even gotten here, let alone how to leave again. As such, he thought to himself with a wide grin, he would experience no guilt for having a little fun with his time here until he and Minato could figure out how the hell he was supposed to get home.


	3. Chapter 3

The screaming wasn’t what made it funny, although that certainly helped. What really forced Kakashi to bite his unseen bottom lip was the fact that Obito clearly blamed his roommate for what had happened instead of the dimensional traveler in their midst. Also the fact that his hair was a virulent shade of purple which even Rin had declared a little too much.

Stuck here until they found a way to replicate what he had done entirely by accident before, Kakashi had taken to filling his time with harmless minor pranks. It kept him entertained and distracted him from the urge to seek out everyone he knew to see how they might be different in this world. After running in to his father on the street and nearly breaking down in tears immediately he had decided that isolation was the best way to go if he wished to preserve his own sanity. The last thing he needed was to find out that someone like Gai might be dead in this place.

“Why would I dye your hair purple?” his mirror self was asking in a disinterested voice, flipping through a flyer he’d found amongst the junk mail.

“Because you’re a massive asshole and you love making me miserable?!”

“Hn. I’ll give you that one.”

Kakashi ducked his head to muffle his snickers as he watched them. Rin’s fingertips were all still faintly green and his mirror self had obsessively checked every cup in the kitchen for spiders before making his coffee that morning – only to stare at it suspiciously and pour it down the drain. How none of them had thought to suspect him yet was a mystery but he hoped they never did. The idea of going home and leaving these mystery pranks as unresolved bickering accusations struck him as absolutely hilarious.

“If you’re not careful then I’m going to send _you_ in to another dimension and keep Other-You in your place!”

“Would Other-Me make you hot cocoa when you come home from a mission in the middle of the night?”

He froze in place when three sets of eyes suddenly focused in on him expectantly, staring back with a half-lidded eye and both eyebrows raised as though to ask if they were being serious or not. A pointed shake of his head had Obito huffing with muted offense.

“Well there you are,” his mirror self said. “I rest my case. You’re stuck with me forever!”

Rin rolled her eyes at her two teammates with a smile on her face, turning her attention back to the bowl of oatmeal she had pilfered from their cupboards, and Kakashi memorized the shape of her absent happiness. These might not be the right loved ones but they were close enough to build a few memories of.

Still with her eyes on her meal, she asked, “Weren’t you all supposed to go see sensei today for more research on your kamui dimension?” Obito gave her a stink eye and rolled his own.

“Why do you always have to be so responsible?”

“One of us three has to be and neither of you ever stepped up to the plate.”

“Fine. Fine! Come on Kakashi, Other-Kakashi. I’ll steal some coffee from sensei’s assistant when we get there or something. Her angry face is hilarious anyway so double bonus!”

Pouting that he wouldn’t get to see anyone drink from the coffee he had rigged, mixing pepper in with the grounds, Kakashi sighed and stood up to follow along. He had learned that there was little point in dilly-dallying once Rin decided that one of them should be somewhere. The consequences usually tended to be painful.

The three of them left her to her oatmeal and filed out of the apartment like a little line of ducklings, taking to the rooftops because the less people who saw them the better. They could only pass Kakashi off as his other self’s clone so many times before people started questioning why his he had started carting his own clones around so often. Less questions meant less lies. At least, that was their outlook on the situation. Kakashi couldn’t care less about how awkward of a situation he left behind but while he was trapped here he would rather avoid any of Rin’s lectures so he kept his head down as much as she asked him too.

Minato was already in his office when they arrived, though he looked ready to fall asleep over the desk. He perked up when they walked in, sparing a glance for the cup of coffee Obito had wrestled away from his assistant but saying nothing when he was offered his own cup as a bribe. After draining half of it in two large gulps he sighed lustily and wiped his mouth of the back of his hand.

“Good morning everyone!” he chirped. “I’m glad you’re here because I had an idea this morning that I would love to try. Obito, tell me again how Kakashi can always find you no matter how far apart you are?”

“Oh that’s easy. When he’s exiting the kamui dimension he reaches for me using the connection between both of my eyes. He always lands close to me when he comes back out in to real space. Actually it’s kind of annoying ‘cause he always uses it to track me down when I don’t wanna do the dishes.” Obito scowled and crossed his arms while his teacher hid a smile.

“Ah. Thank you. Alright, well, my idea was that perhaps our friend here could use that same method to return to where he is supposed to be.”

“Maa, I don’t know if that will work.” Kakashi hesitated before adding, “The Obito of my world is dead, if you’ll recall.”

It was obvious that Minato had indeed forgotten, as he winced slightly and stroked his jawline in thought. “Perhaps it would still work. You would be reaching for that connection and surely your friend’s body is still there in your other world. It’s a bit macabre but…it may still work the same.”

“Very macabre, yes, but I suppose you’re right. It’s worth a shot and we haven’t really come up with any other ideas. None that worked, at least.”

“Excellent!” Minato clapped his hands together once in satisfaction and Kakashi smiled faintly. His own version of this man had done the exact same thing every time they had agreed to go along with whatever harebrained scheme he had thought up for training that day.

Looking over to the other two standing next to him, Kakashi allowed himself a moment to mourn the fact that what they had should have been his. He should be the one smiling with his teammates and facing the days ahead together. Then he firmly set that pity party aside for when he was alone and tried to focus on being happy that at least one version of him in at least one alternate world had gotten everything he didn’t. At least he was happy _somewhere_.

Without bothering to drag out any long goodbyes – this plan wasn’t even guaranteed to work – Kakashi lifted his headband and gathered his chakra, pouring it in to the socket until he could see the world in minute clarity. He could feel the Sharingan spin like a wild thing inside his head as he reached for the kamui dimension and let himself slide through the vortex.

Fascinatingly, they had discovered during the first attempt at sending him home that even his kamui was packed in to a separate dimension than that of his other self. Thinking about all the possible realities and pocket dimensions made his head hurt.

Once he was alone, surrounded by nothing but darkness and tall stone pillars, Kakashi paused to take a deep breath and prepare himself. If this worked than he would come out in to his own world at Kannabi Bridge, right over top of his childhood friend’s grave – not exactly his idea of a perfect vacation spot. His father had once called it ‘the place where the gods do not help’ and he certainly agreed with that.

He didn’t really expect to feel anything when he reached out for the connection he would have shared with Obito had the other boy lived. In truth, he wasn’t entirely sure how he was meant to reach for him. Was he supposed to think real hard? Hope? Imagine his hand stretching in to the endless void of his own past? None of that seemed like the right answer to him; which is probably why he was so startled to actually feel something drawing him in. It was different from the tug in his chest which he always felt when his own jutsu tried to pull him in. This felt like a call that his very soul was answering.

Before he realized it he had fallen headfirst through the planes of existence and landed in what seemed to be a barren rocky terrain. Yellow and red scrub bushes dotted the gently sloped hillside he was standing upon as well as the occasional tree, massive rocks and boulders clustered together at the bottom where the earth rose sharply in to a sheer cliff face.

Kakashi looked at none of this. His attention was focused entirely on the startled figure of a man dressed in the cloak of the Akatsuki organization. Black hair spilled over the edges of an orange mask which covered the entirety of the stranger’s face but for a single eye hole.

“Oh! Tobi wasn’t expecting you to pop out of the air like that!” The stranger’s high pitched voice was oddly familiar but Kakashi didn’t bother trying to place it at the moment. A shinobi must be able to react to anything at a moment’s notice and he had devoted much of his life to being the perfect shinobi. The stranger yelped when he lunged forward, a kunai already slipping in to his hand.

In the course of his career he’d seen people react a lot of different ways to a sudden attack. He’d never seen anyone dance wildly to the side like they were doing the tango on a hot tin roof and babble, “Nyah! Nyah! What did Tobi do wrong!?”

“You’re a member of the Akatsuki,” he growled, spinning to aim a kick at the man’s head. “I know your plans and if this is the reality I hope it is then I’ve got a bone to pick with you lot. Now come quietly, yes?”

“Hmph! You can’t tell Tobi what to do!”

Kakashi scowled and maybe hoped a little bit that he hadn’t actually fallen back in to his own world after all. Surely there wasn’t anyone this _silly_ in his version of the Akatsuki. If this was the kind of people they had working for them then he would have to feel ashamed for not taking them down months ago. The man was positively childish.

And so familiar! Something nagged at the back of his mind, searching for a connection while he brought his hands to the ground and created a mud wall to trap his opponent, attempting to cage him up against it with taijutsu. His efforts brought him nothing but frustration, however. Even when it seemed as though he’d landed a hit his arm or leg only sailed by without making contact as if he were passing straight through the man. Kakashi pushed his insistent thoughts away in favor of concentrating harder.

It wasn’t until the man finally fought back, seemingly bored with dodging and deigning to actually take the fight seriously, that Kakashi finally realized exactly what made him so familiar. Clearly his opponent thought he would be easy prey once they actually engaged; Kakashi was a little surprised himself by how well he was holding his own after seeing how slippery the bastard had been before. But from the moment he made contact it was as though his body were following a pattern of its own, flowing through a set of moves he wasn’t consciously deciding to use. It was almost like he knew the man’s patterns, as though they had fought before, and it was that combined with a stray thought which brought everything together.

He knew exactly where he had heard that voice before. He’d heard it over breakfast as the Obito of the other world mocked his roommate for something, as he imitated Rin, as he pretended to be a child begging for the last slice of pizza. Now he heard it from the man he had appeared in front of after using the link between himself and his long-dead friend to guide him back home. This really was his own world and he knew exactly who he was fighting.

Catching his opponent’s wrists was more of a miraculous fluke than a planned display of skill but Kakashi didn’t care. He stared through the hole of that orange mask, positioned over the same eye that he himself was able to use, and caught his breath at a flash of red.

“Obito?”

The man snarled and tried to push him away but Kakashi held tight, locking their gazes together as their feet stumbled to and fro, wrestling with the raw strength of their arms. Suddenly he regretted not doing more pushups whenever Gai tried to challenge him to. His opponent’s arms were noticeably thicker than his own and there was no way he would be able to hold on like this for long.

“Obito,” he whispered again, his mind still dazed even as his body fought on.

“I am not Obito!”

With a vicious twist and an unexpected step back, the man sent him tumbling forwards and followed the motion through with a blade in hand. Kakashi rolled, using one arm to hook the man’s neck and cursing when it ghosted straight through his flesh again.

Now that he recognized the person with him, however, he could guess how that kept happening. Watching his team spar in the other dimension had given him some incredible insights to how his formation of the Sharingan could be used; he had even asked for a bit of instruction from the two men who had mastered it together. The memory of those days only hammered in the conclusion that this was indeed Obito he was wrestling with and the knowledge that his friend had been alive all this time knocked the breath from his lungs.

“You _are_ Obito,” he said quietly.

“I am not! That is not who I am! I am no one!” His voice was shrill as he screamed, throwing himself forward and calling forth a massive chained gunbai as if from nowhere. Kakashi, however, knew exactly where that had been stored.

He met the weapon with one of his own that he too called from their other dimension. Behind the mask, the man’s single eye widened and then narrowed almost in the same breathe. He grunted as he swung his gunbai, railing against the old sword Kakashi had used during his days in ANBU, while Kakashi himself waited patiently for an opening.

Were he civilian born or chakra dead he never would have lasted long enough, exhausted long before his chance finally appeared. Kakashi ducked and weaved, parried and dodged, just barely avoiding being dismembered more than once before finally he noticed his opponent beginning to flag. Then he waited still until their positions were just right and that which he had been watching for finally happened at just the right time. Winning the fight was not important, here. Stopping it was.

The punch he threw might have looked like it was aimed badly but it landed exactly where he wanted it too, smoothly gliding through the other man’s cheek like it wasn’t even there. At the same time he tore his attention away from that burning red eye for the first time since locking gazes and turned it towards the hand coming at him from the other side.

Obito’s expression was the very picture of shock as his fist reached through Kakashi’s portal to their shared kamui dimension and punched the mask right off his own face.

Scars covered one half of his face and the base of his neck bore a line where his natural skin ended and ghostly white artificial flesh began. His bottom lip was deformed where it had been haphazardly sewn shut and healed improperly but it appeared to function just fine as it peeled back in a grimace of naked rage. But the distraction of being revealed was enough for Kakashi to capture his wrists again and hold him tightly, bringing their faces close enough to breathe each other’s air as they growled at one another.

“You are Uchiha Obito,” Kakashi told him in a firm voice. “You are a shinobi of Konoha, you are a decorated hero of the Third Shinobi War, and _you are my friend_.” These were clearly not the words the other man had been expecting; he floundered, clinging desperately to his anger.

“I am no one,” he shot back weakly.

“What you are is lost.” Tightening his grip, Kakashi dared to tip his head forward until their foreheads touched. “I lost you once. I won’t lose you again.” It was the wrong thing to say.

“If I am lost then you are blind! Still swallowing the world’s lies! I will show the world the truth!”

He barely managed to avoid the foot that went for his kneecaps as Obito twisted out of his grasp once more, both of them leaping backwards out of range. With a wounded noise much like a dying animal Obito disappeared and Kakashi grinned, a feral expression devoid of any true amusement.

“You can run but you can’t hide. Not from me, dobe.”

Reaching in to his pocket, he took out a single chakra pellet and popped it behind his mask, crunching away at his own pace. Obito could flee as much as he liked but Kakashi was in no hurry. He allowed himself the few minutes necessary to gather the chakra lost in their dirty little fight. He was going to need it if they were going to play hide and seek with the kamui dimension.

The fact that his friend was alive and the thought of what trauma he must have gone through in the years since then were two things he could deal with later. What he had said to Obito he had meant with all his heart. Years ago he had lost everyone who ever meant anything to him and he absolutely would not let that happened again. Even if he had to chase Obito through a hundred other worlds and back, he _would_ bring his best friend home.

After all, it had sat empty for too long now. It was time for the Uchiha to come back to the places they had abandoned, homes, hearts, and all.


End file.
